Page:Marx and Engels on Revolution in America - Heinz Neumann.djvu/44

 of the proletarian revolution.

Even more clearly than the development of American imperialism did Engels foresee the future course of the American labor movement. He knew that the progress of capitalist production must unavoidably lead to the revolutionization of the American labor movement:

Engels sees the difficulties in the path of the development of the revolutionary labor movement. After the defeat of the Knights of Labor movement, he writes to Sorge on October 24, 1891, as follows:

"I readily believe that the movement is again at a low ebb. With you everything happens with great ups and downs. But each up wins definite terrain and thus one does go forward. Thus for instance, the tremendous wave of the Knights of Labor and the strike movement from 1886 to 1888, despite all defeats, did bring us forward. There is an altogether different spirit in the masses than before. The next time even more ground will be won. But with all that, the standard of living of the native American working man is considerably higher than that of the British and that alone is sufficient to allot him a back seat for some